Family Hubs Information Sharing Service

In order to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), where personal data relating to a data subject is collected, Lancashire County Council would like to provide you with the following details.

Identity and contact details of the data controller

  • Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Contact details of the data protection officer

  • Our Data Protection Officer is Paul Bond. You can contact him at dpo@lancashire.gov.uk or Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ

Purposes for processing

We're developing and improving how we currently share information about children, young people and families across the Children, Young People and Families Partnership between practitioners from different organisations. This will enable practitioners to provide the right service at the right time so, children, young people and their families are safe, healthy and achieve their full potential.

The Children, Young People and Families Partnership is good at sharing information between services (for example Family Safeguarding) but, we want to improve this and bring it into the digital age to improve outcomes for children and families and for their benefit, so that practitioners save time and can be more help to families.

Lancashire County Council is working with partners, including NHS, police, public health, and schools, to improve how we share information about children, young people and families through this project.

Why we're doing it

Essential information is captured and held about the children, young people, and families being helped and this is regularly reviewed to see that progress is being made. This information is usually shared via a wide range of mechanisms from secure email to telephone calls as this information is held securely by different partners and is not shared in a standardised way with other appropriate services.

This can cause issues, such as:

  • Practitioners (in schools, nurseries, local authority services, health etc) are spending excessive time inputting and processing information on families
  • Practitioners having less time to focus on delivering quality outcomes for families
  • There is no 'big picture' view being formed of the services a family is receiving and which practitioners are working with them
  • There are no links  between the different systems and services creating delay in providing help due to missing information being available
  • Limited capability to offer targeted help when its needed
  • Families are constantly having to re-tell their stories to practitioners in different services.
  • Practitioners lack confidence in what information they can share which can delay critical information being shared timely.

During the COVID-19 pandemic information sharing was critical to understanding the situation of vulnerable people including children young people and families, and so as a partnership we can see the opportunities that improving our information flow between partners and services will bring.

Creating a Family Hubs Information Sharing Service will accelerate the information sharing and as a result will support services and partners making better informed decisions on how they manage these support services to families at both a strategic and frontline level.

What the Information Sharing Service is

In 2023 an Information Sharing Service will be implemented by Lancashire County Council and a number of partner agencies/organisations that improves how essential data is shared securely for practitioners across organisations that provide services to children, young people and families.

This has several benefits, including:

  • Families will not have to re-tell their stories to practitioners in different services
  • Practitioners (in schools, nurseries, local authority services, health etc) having better quality data and a big picture view of families and young people they are working with resulting in better outcomes
  • Information about families being readily available to practitioners, enabling them to refer to other services they may need,
  • Practitioners saving time on admin and carrying out detective work, enabling them to spend more quality time with families delivering better outcomes
  • Forming links between systems and services and their practitioners
  • More targeted support before the point of escalation
  • A golden record (single source of the data truth) of data
  • Families not having to re-tell their stories
  • Potential to use the data to shape LCC and Partners' future strategic vision and planning for services within Lancashire

Information sharing and the use of information also has an ethical component and so the Partnership has developed a Partnership Ethics Group which will oversee proposals for our Family Hubs Information Sharing System and proposals for its use so that a comprehensive understanding of the ethics involved is part of our planning process.

What's next

The Children, Young People and Families Partnership is confident that the decision to develop a Family Hubs Information Sharing Service is the right approach to improve and revolutionise the partnership's data sharing abilities.

This will result in direct improvements in support for children, young people and families in Lancashire's. The Children, Young People and Families Partnership will continue to work with partners to develop and embed the Family Hubs Information Sharing Service over the next two years as part of delivering the Partnership vision that Children Young People and Families are safe, healthy and achieve their full potential.

Category of personal data being processed

  1. Personal data (information relating to a living, identifiable individual)
  2. Special category personal data (racial, ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation)
  3. Criminal offence data

Legal basis for processing personal data

The legal basis for processing your personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

(e) Public Task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. You must reference the applicable task/function and its' basis in law if you wish to rely on this basis for processing.

Legal basis for processing special categories of personal data

The legal basis for processing your special categories of personal data, in accordance with the UK GDPR is:

(g) Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

Lancashire County Council relies on UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (g) Substantial Public Interest by virtue of the following legislation:

Data Protection Act (2018) Schedule 1 Part 2 (18) Safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk

(h) Processing is necessary for the purposes of preventive or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services.

(i)Processing is necessary for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, such as protecting against serious cross-border threats to health or ensuring high standards of quality and safety of health care and of medicinal products or medical devices.

(j) Processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes

Lancashire County Council relies on UK GDPR Article 6 (1) (e) Public Task, UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (g), UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (h), UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (I), UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (j) by virtue of the following:

Legal Gateways

1 Care Act 2014 - Section 1 and 3
2 Childcare Act 2006 - Section 1 - General duties of local authority in relation to well-being of young children.
3 Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000
4 Crime and Disorder Act 1998 - Section 115
5 Crime and Disorder Act 1998 - Section 17 - Duty to consider crime and disorder implications
6 Crime and Disorder Act 1998 - Section 37
7 Criminal Justice Act 2003 - Section 325 of this Act details the arrangements for assessing risk posed by different offenders:
8 Education Act 2002 - various sections
9 Localism Act 2011
10 The Children Act 1989
11 The Children Act 2004 - Section 10 – Co-operation to improve wellbeing
12 The Children Act 2004 - Section 11 – Arrangements to safeguard and promote welfare.
13 Welfare Reform Act 2012 - Section 131
14 The Childrens and Families Act 2014
15 Digital Economy Act 2017- Part 5.

Criminal Offence Data

For criminal record data, Article 10 is the lawful gateway - processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences. Processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions and offences or related security measures based on Article 6 (1) shall be carried out only under the control of official authority or when the processing is authorised by domestic law providing for appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of data subjects.

Data Protection Act (2018) - Schedule 1

  • 1. Employment, social security and social protection
  • 2. Health or social care purposes
  • 3. Public health
  • 18. Safeguarding of children and individuals at risk
  • 30. Vital interests

Recipients of the data

For the purposes of delivering the Family Hubs Information Sharing Service platform:

  • Microsoft
  • Softcat
  • Sentinel Partners

Organisations in receipt of personal data and accessing the Family Hubs Information Sharing Service platform:

  • Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
  • Department of Education
  • Lancashire Constabulary (including the Violence Reduction Network)
  • Child Action North West
  • We Are With You
  • School Nurses
  • Health Visitors
  • Designated safeguarding leads within school settings
  • NHS GPs surgeries
  • NHS Integrated Care Board
  • Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust 
  • Blackpool Teaching Hospitals Trust 
  • Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust 
  • Southport and Ormskirk NHS Trust 
  • East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust 
  • University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust 
  • Lancashire Education Establishments (primary/secondary/further education settings)
  • HCRG Care Group
  • Lancashire nursery and private, voluntary and independent settings
  • Probation Service

Information we share

  • Name,
  • Date of birth,
  • Location data,
  • NHS Number,
  • Relating to the benefits of the individual,
  • Relating to lifestyle/social circumstances (including Police and Child Youth Justice),
  • Involvement history with Lancashire County Councils Education and Childrens Services,
  • Relating to the family of the individual,
  • Education history (including early years, post 16 and SEND),
  • Employment history,
  • Data concerning health (through commissioned public health services),
  • Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin,
  • Data concerning a person’s gender,

Any transfers to another country

  • No - Stored in UK data centres only

Retention periods

Lancashire County Council will only store your information for as long as is legally required or in situations where there is no legal retention period they will follow established best practice.

File type Description Security Retention period
Personal data sourced from existing systems Existing personal data that is contributing towards the FHISS held both by LCC and external partner organisations. Handled at all times in accordance with UK GDPR Article 5 (1) (f), Integrity and confidentiality principle. Governed by each organisation's existing retention policies for each source system.
Combined data set in Microsoft azure Merged personal data from multiple source systems that will form a combined record for use by the FHISS. Handled at all times in accordance with UK GDPR Article 5 (1) (f), Integrity and confidentiality principle. Governed by each organisation's existing retention policies for each source system.

Your rights

You have certain rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), these are the right:

  • to be informed via Privacy Notices such as this.
  • to withdraw your consent. If we are relying on your consent to process your data then you can remove this at any point.
  • of access to any personal information the council holds about yourself. To request a copy of this information you must make a subject access request in writing. You are entitled to receive a copy of your personal data within 1 calendar month of our receipt of your subject access request. If your request is complex then we can extend this period by a further two months, if we need to do this we will contact you. You can request a subject access request, either via a letter or via an email to Information Governance Team, address below.
  • of rectification, we must correct inaccurate or incomplete data within one month.
  • to erasure. You have the right to have your personal data erased and to prevent processing unless we have a legal obligation to process your personal information.
  • to restrict processing. You have the right to suppress processing. We can retain just enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.
  • to data portability. We can provide you with your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine readable form when asked.
  • to object. You can object to your personal data being used for profiling, direct marketing or research purposes.
  • in relation to automated decision making and profiling, to reduce the risk that a potentially damaging decision is taken without human intervention.

If you want to exercise any of these rights then you can do so by contacting:

Information Governance Team
Lancashire County Council
PO Box 78
County Hall
Preston
PR1 8XJ

Email: dpo@lancashire.gov.uk

To ensure that we can deal with your request as efficiently as possible you will need to include your current name and address, proof of identity (a copy of your driving licence, passport or two different utility bills that display your name and address), as much detail as possible regarding your request so that we can identify any information we may hold about you, this may include your previous name and address, date of birth and what council service you were involved with.

Further information

For more information about the Family Hubs Information Sharing Service please contact chris.hayes@lancashire.gov.uk.

For more information about how we use personal information see Lancashire County Council's full privacy notice.

If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact the Information Governance team who will investigate the matter.

Lancashire County Council, PO Box 78 County Hall, Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire, PR1 8XJ or email: dataprotection@lancashire.gov.uk

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).